Prodigal:  Well we are waiting on our food and we would love to hear a story!

 

Me:  I have one that maybe you can relate too.  It is one about a boy and some of his story.

 

Prodigal:  That sounds like it would fit our mood!

 

This is from the book David Jeremiah:  Slaying the Giants In Your Life

 

The lanky, quiet boy never had much of a chance.  He had to work from the age of seven, when his family joined the homeless.  His mother died two years after that.

As he grew to adulthood, the young man held a series of small jobs until his twenties, when he was fired as a store clerk.  But the idea of operating a store appealed to him.  At age twenty-three he took out a loan that would enable him to buy into a small business.  But the run of bad luck continued; his partner died three years later.  Now the young man’s debt was more than doubled, and it looked as if he’d spend years just repaying it.

He fared no better at relationships.  Approaching his thirties, he was still a bachelor.  He proposed to one young lady after four years of dating, but she turned him down.  It was just another failure; he was used to that.

Twice he ran for Congress, and twice, unsurprisingly, he lost.  To put it kindly, his credentials were unimpressive.  But at the age of thirty-seven, with more than half his life over, he was finally elected to an office–only to be subsequently voted out!  He failed in two separate runs for the Senate.  He failed in a vice-presidential try.  No one was more conscious of his legacy of failures.  “I am now the most miserable man living,” he said. “Whether I shall ever be better, I cannot tell.”

Some would say he didn’t know when to quit–and most of us are glad he didn’t.  For at the age of fifty-one, Abraham Lincoln became perhaps the greatest of all American presidents.

 

Mark 12:30

And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.

 

Jennifer Van Allen

 

www.theprodigalpig.com

www.faithincounseling.org